~ Now based in France!

Tag Archives: shopping

In case you are wondering, while they don’t say anything, I get the feeling that the staff at Intermarche ( a French chain of supermarkets) frown about this misuse of mini trolleys.

Plus points? It allows your kids to comfortably play the motion-control game that your son insists on playing (‘just for five minutes daddy’) every time you go in there. Your daughter can also sit beside him as though she’s at the cinema, and ensure that she is in ‘striking distance’ for when it inevitably kicks off.

Negative points? You try pushing two of these while carrying a pack of beer, a pizza, a loaf of bread and some milk (yes, ‘les essentials’) it’s not easy and balancing them on the kids just looks wrong.

They do make an excellent battering ram though, if you encounter any ‘dawdlers’ in the chilled meats section.

Here’s a couple of oddities that have crossed my path this week in the land of love and wine. And cheese.

They just seemed a bit…odd – see if you think so too…

I saw this in my local Intermarche, a chain of French supermarkets that sell just about everything, however I think they may have overstepped the mark here:

Selling an overpriced fridge adorned with a Union Jack… is the manager having some sort of a bet as to who can sell the craziest item in our town? If I go to my local Aldi will I find a washing machine for sale decorated with the German national flag for 350 Euros?

I then Received my first batch of contact lenses, from Vision Direct in France, excellent service, arrived really quickly and they are settling into my Anglais eyeballs a treat. I do, however, have to question their choice of free gift that came in the packaging. 10% off voucher for next time? Complimentary bottle of contact lens solution? No, they went for something a bit different….

How old do these people think I am? But, more importantly, one packet of Haribos? Do they know what will happen in my household if the kids see this lonely item? Do you remember the scene from The Dark Knight, where the Joker, after defeating a fellow crime-lord and staring his three lackies down, informs them he has an opening in his gang, but there’s only one place? He then gives them a broken snooker cue, and tells them to fight it out.

Well, the results of the one-pack-of-Haribo situation will be just like that.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw this: an Aldi in my new French village! Tucked away in amongst all the boulangeries, brasseries and other things beginning with ‘B’ was this delightful example of German budget-shopping. OK, so it’s actually ‘tucked away’ on a small industrial estate, between lots of trucks and a public toilet, but that doesn’t paint a very pretty picture, so I lied.

The interior is just a cosy as the equivalents in the UK i.e: not cosy at all, and in fact very, very grim. They do the job though. Another fantastic similarity to the UK stores is the legendary aisle of crap. So named, by myself and many other Brits, for the random assortment of goods that can be found there. The aisle of crap is always, always located in the middle of the store.

But as pictures paint a thousand words, let me take you on a tour of this cultural gem.

I will also add words too, so therefore will be painting more than a thousand words per picture. Aren’t I nice?

In case you didn’t know, that little bit of French means ‘low prices’. Note presence of an item of Star Wars merchandise. Aldi stores are regularly checked by upper-management in disguise*, if the aisle of crap is found to be lacking in at least 48 different items of Star Wars merchandise, the manager of the store in question is fired on the spot.

*Generally a middle-aged man in three quarter-length, khaki shorts, who parks his 4×4 in the ‘parent and child only’ parking space at the front of the store, to make sure he fits in.

Nothing screams ‘keeping up with trends’ like Halloween decorations in May. Place your bets now, will they still be here this October?

Books that nobody wants to buy are a common theme in the aisle of crap. In the UK it’s generally Lego Annuals that have had their ‘Exclusive’ Lego Figure stolen, and thus are doomed to gather dust till they are incinerated. Here it’s this interesting oddity, with a title that translates as ‘Football, Champagne and Evening Glitter‘. What does that even mean?

There’s a hint of sunshine in the sky, and you know what that means don’t you? SOLAR LIGHTS!!!!! There are approximately 4,567 variants of these per store. If the quantities ever dip below this figure then the manager of the store – they and they alone – must immediately restock the quantities. They generally do this while the queue – which had been snaking past the tills and up the aisles – heads towards the fire-exit.

Can’t decide between completing a jigsaw puzzle, or putting up some curtains? Well, why should you have to? Here at Aldi, you can do both. So don’t delay, come in today and within mere minutes/hours* you can be sat next to a window, while your freshly purchased curtains blow in the gentle breeze, knocking your half-finished jigsaw all over the floor.

*Dependant on queue-length

I want a treasure box for the kids’ toys, but I also want to strim the grass…if only the option of finding both of the answers to these quandaries was relatively close together…

Another feature of Aldis-worldwide are the cabinets crammed full of electrical items, with prices that have been plucked from the sky. They occasionally reduce the prices, with equal disregard for any kind of structure:

Yes, just stick a 50 Euro yellow sticker on it, that’ll shift it*

*I have never, ever seen anyone buy from one of these cabinets, here or in the UK. I suspect the manager doesn’t actually have a key.

The gap between the…cage/basket/thingies. This achieves two things. 1. It allows you to have a ten-minute stand off with a lady with blue-rinsed hair, who has approached the gap with her trolley at the same time as you, and will not budge to let you through first. and 2. Allows the goods to make the leap from pillows, to car accessories.

Can you think of anywhere else where sets of knives and bed-linen live together in perfect harmony, side-by-side, on their basket/cage/thingies? Oh lord why can’t we?*

*That noise you just heard was Paul McCartney picking up his phone to call his lawyers.

‘There’s a bit of space here boss, what should we do with it? Put some more shoes there? Or maybe some insoles?’ ‘Sod that, stick those game packs there for the kids’

‘Daddy, daddy!’ ‘Yes darling?’ ‘Why is that lady naked?’

Kill my partner, deck the garden or go on holiday..Kill my partner deck the garden or go on holiday? Choices, choices. Yes if you have ever been struggling with the difficult choice between upgrading your garden/burying your partner under the new decking or going on holiday/disposing of your partner in suitcases then come to Aldi. You can do both here!

And here, at the end of the mockery the legendary Aldi queue awaits you. I know what you are thinking ‘maybe if I just go for my 37th tour of the store all those people will go away’. But they won’t go away, and you know what? More people will come. But they won’t open another till, not till the queue reaches critical mass (90% of people in queue over 70 years of age, and the queue now has its own Facebook page).

And they want you to go for another tour of the store, because by that time your resolve will have been weakened. So that swimming pool for 15 Euros? The one you wouldn’t buy before? Your son’s constant whining will have finally eroded your will, and you will take it, from a cage/basket/thingy, from the aisle of crap, and put it in your trolley.

Then you take your place in the now even longer queue, and look at all the other unmanned tills.

I’m pushing the trolley round our favourite German food-stuff provider, or Aldi for short. The little lady is happy and in her element. She’s being pushed around, she’s got something to chew (the shopping list) and there are lots of interesting things (at low, low prices!) for her to look at.

I’m mainly here because I’m doing a ‘voucher shop’. You may know what I’m talking about but if not I’ll explain. Once a month the Mirror (and the Daily Record too I believe) does a series of vouchers in association with Aldi. There are many smaller vouchers but they are accompanied by the £5 OFF A £40 SPEND voucher. Now I don’t know about you, but I go a little bit crazy when I see that £5 OFF A £40 SPEND voucher. It doesn’t matter if we just did the weekly shop and if we are full to bursting in all departments. If I see £5 OFF A £40 SPEND, I am bloody well going to spend £40.

As a stay-at-home Dad, I am on a very fixed income. I have a bit of cash coming in from interest on a savings account, my monthly kitty from the missus, a separate savings account (what I call my ‘slush fund’) and my current account. I tend to move my money around quite a bit, to take advantage of the massive saving percentages available to us in this day and age. This can occasionally leave my current account a bit, shall we say, close to the wire financially speaking. Which is not usually a problem.

Except today my internal approximator calculator – you know the bit of your brain you use to keep a running total of your goods – appears to be on the fritz. I’ve got two figures in my head. How much is in the trolley, approximately, and how much is in my bank account, approximately.

I get to the till. I look at my trolley. That trolley looks very full I think. My daughter looks at me. She likes this bit, unloading the trolley. I hope there’s no more than £50’s worth in there, I think. She gets stuck in and starts putting bits within her reach on the conveyor-belt. As long as it’s not more than £60 we’re OK I think. I help the little lady empty the trolley. This takes a while. There’s always the £5 off voucher, I think, plus the 69p off the Parma ham. Yeah, we should be OK. ‘£82.56’ says the Polish lady behind the counter, smiling with at least 50% of her face.

I put the card in the machine. My brain is madly scrambling but there’s only one real answer coming up. I know it. And now the little card reader machine knows it. And the little card reader machine is going to tell the Polish lady exactly what that is. ‘There is problem with this card’ she says to me. ‘Sorry is not going through’.

Now I go to the gym. I sweat quite quickly once I get up and running. But that’s after about 15 minutes of running. I get an all-over-body sweat in about 20 seconds as I stand there in Aldi with the – obligatory – queue of glaring shoppers waiting their turn. I can’t pay, but with the wonders of modern technology I can easily transfer the funds from one account to another.

Maybe Polish lady can freeze the items until I do that? It will only take a few minutes. No. Polish lady cannot do that. In fact she can’t even void it off. No she has to get a manager to come over to approve the voiding. So I stand there, in an incredibly busy Aldi, at peak time, with a packed trolley, desperately trying to use my incredibly slow mobile phone to transfer enough funds to my account so I can pay for these goods and get out of there and have a shower. People are muttering and looking at me. I can see them while I’m fiddling with my phone, cursing my fat fingers. One old guy mutters ‘someone needs to do their sums better’ as he walks past.

I transfer the money. I go back around. I do it all again. My daughter helps me, she’s loving this – two turns at the conveyor belt?! Thanks daddy! I pay the Polish lady, and apologise ‘is Ok’ she says. Without a hint of judgment, instantly raising herself in my estimation.

I leave with one thought in my head. If I had have taken both kids in there, and that exact scenario that I just had to go through had played out – I would have had a heart attack.